X-Light Mind is an open source, completely free and lightweight Linux distribution that uses Xfce as its default and only desktop environment and it’s based on the highly acclaimed Debian GNU/Linux operating system, designed for the Italian Linux community.

Distributed as Live CDs for mainstream architectures

The distribution is available for download as two Live CD ISO images, one for each of the supported hardware platforms, 32-bit and 64-bit. The ISOs must be written on either CD discs or USB thumb drives in order to boot them from the BIOS of a computer.

Boot options

While the ISO images have been engineered to automatically boot the live environment with default boot options in 10 seconds from the moment the user boots them from the BIOS of a PC, it will allow you to start the live session in failsafe mode, run a memory diagnostic test, or boot an existing OS from the first disk.

As mentioned, the default and only desktop environment of X-Light Mind is Xfce, which uses a dark theme, a top panel and bottom dock (application launcher). Keep in mind though, that the default language is Italian, which can be changed during the installation.

Bottom line

Overall, the X-Light Mind operating system is indeed minimal, featuring a very small collection of software packages (not even an email client or instant messenger are not included), but offers support for the latest hardware components and can be easily installed on low-end machines and old computers.

X-Light Mind was reviewed by Marius Nestor, last updated on June 23rd, 2014